FanHouse Bernie Madoff

The Mets are in baseball's biggest market, own a cable sports network and play in a spanking new stadium. But other than a backloaded three-year, $37 million deal with Francisco Rodriguez, the Mets have hardly spent any money over the past 10 months.

I -- and even people within the organization -- have long suspected the Wilpon family that owns the Mets lost more money than they have let on to convicted Ponzi-scheming con man Bernie Madoff. That would explain the cutting corners, such as not taking a full contingent to the winter meetings, the lack of depth that helped cost them their season and the unwillingness to take on contracts midseason to try to patch together a better club.

NEW YORK -- The Mets are certifiably nuts. Just when you think they've done most everything they can to invite mockery and derision, they readjust the clown nose and refill the water hose.

The team called a press conference Monday to announce the firing of Tony Bernazard, an executive whose personnel file had grown thick with reports of odd and inappropriate behavior. Most anywhere else -- even, dare we say, over at the Knicks' main office, which once housed people doing pratfalls into giant mounds of dung -- this would have been a fairly easy one-and-done. Take a few questions, tie it up in a bow, and vow to focus energy on the trading deadline, getting players healthy and making a run for a wild-card spot.

Sandy Koufax, three time Cy Young winner and Dodgers great, is on a distinguished list of clients that Bernie Madoff conned out of millions with his Ponzi scheme, according to documents that were made public in a U.S. Bankruptcy court yesterday.

Koufax was a friend of former Mets owner Mike Wilpon, and as a result ran in the same circles as the man who allegedly pulled off "the biggest financial fraud in history."